Chapter Fourteen.
In Winter Quarters—Football among the Snow.
One portion of the cargo of the unfortunate Kittywake—and a very important one it proved to be—was a pack of Yack or Eskimo sledge dogs. Uncouth-looking rascals they are at the best of times, much given to quarrelling and fighting among themselves, and by no means inclined to be over-friendly to mankind.
With them came two native keepers, who professed to, and I dare say did, know something about their uncouth pets, although their rule of the road proved to be a rough one, as far as the dogs were concerned.
Fingal was at first inclined to regard these animals with extreme distrust. He asked Claude, in his own way of speaking, whether he mightn’t begin the fun by charging the pack.
“I am sure, master,” said Fingal, “I would soon make short work with one or two of them.”
“No,” said Claude, holding up a warning finger; “you must never attempt to molest them, Fingal; you will come to love them yet.”
“I don’t believe that,” Fingal seemed to reply.
The dogs were taken on shore at once, and though the Icebear was anchored some little distance from the land, giving her plenty of room to swing round, the row these animals made the first night seemed unearthly. The men could not sleep, and roundly rated the new-comers. Had the noise been a continuous one it would not have been so bad, but it was not so. The deep, deep silence of the Arctic regions would be allowed to remain unbroken for, say, the space of fifteen minutes, then all at once such a chorus of barking, howling, and screaming arose as only the pen of a Dante could describe adequately. This would continue for five minutes, mingled with the cracking of the keepers’ whips and their wild shouting, then gradually the unearthly Babel of sounds would die away, the men and officers on board would give sighs of relief and go to sleep once more, only to be disturbed again in the same fashion ere slumber had well sealed their eyelids.
“Frightful!” said Claude, next morning, at the breakfast-table; “I’ll put a stop to it.”
“You’ll be very clever if you do,” said the surgeon.
“Don’t go meddling near them with a whip, captain,” Lloyd remarked. “Poor Sanderson of ours got drunk one night, and went on shore with a rope’s end to settle, as he thought, a rumpus like what those beggars made last night. He was never seen again.”
“They killed him?”
“Yes, sir, and ate him afterwards, every bone of him. We never found a vestige of him, except the soles of his sea-boots, and we couldn’t bury those in a Christian way, you know, so we were saved the trouble of a funeral.”
“Call the carpenter, steward,” cried Claude. “Carpenter Jones,” he continued, when that worthy appeared, “build comfortable kennels for those dogs half a mile from the spot where our shore quarters are going to stand.”
“Ay, ay, sir.”
“To the lee of a rock, you know.”
“Yes, sir.”
And so the pack was soon disposed of, to the great satisfaction of every one.
By the time, then, that the sun had set for the last time, and the long, icy, Arctic winter had fairly commenced, the Icebear and her gallant crew were fairly settled in their winter quarters, and everybody felt as happy and jolly as possible under the circumstances. Nor was their lot to be despised, after all. Had they not every creature comfort that heart could wish? Had not clever Dr Barrett found coals enough to keep fires burning constantly—fires big enough to roast a whole bear or a small ox, were they so inclined? Had he not also discovered a gold and silver mine? Not that much had yet been taken out of it, to be sure. But it gave them hope. Well, they had never a care, although it must not be supposed they did not often think of home, for ah! the sailor does.
To crown all, was there not a kind Providence above them whose eyes could penetrate the darkness of even this dreary land, and watch over them?
One thing, I believe, that contributed greatly to their happiness was this, everybody seemed determined to do the best he could, not for himself only, but for his shipmates as well.
They had built a house of general entertainment on shore. Also a store for extra provision and other things, in case the ship might be destroyed.
In the storehouse one or other of the Indian keepers always slept as sentry, or rather on guard. Not that there was much fear of an attack on the stores by bears, for most of them had gone south, and the others were curled up asleep in caves and corners among the rocks. But Bruin does not—in my poor judgment and experience—sleep all the winter through. When the weather is milder, even to a few degrees, he awakes, yawns, out-stretches himself, and goes for a turn round in the moonlight and on the snow. He is but the ghost of his former self; like the ghost of a bear revisiting scenes of a former existence. He stalks about, shaking his mighty head, and looking as melancholy as a barn owl.
“How changed is everything!” he appears to soliloquise. “How dead and drear! How hungry I am too. Shouldn’t I like just one pawful out of the back of a fine fat seal now. (Note 1.) Ah! I would eat a whole seal, even the flippers, though there’s not much on those, to be sure. But, mercy on me, how cold it is! Bed’s the best place, after all.” And away he trots.
But Mr Lloyd knew right well from experience what a hungry rascal like this could do even in a single night.
“It isn’t what they eat so much,” he explained to Claude, “as what they destroy. A bear will stave in the head of half a dozen casks of flour, perhaps, before he comes to a barrow of beef. And that doesn’t satisfy him, for he argues that there may be something better in the other casks, and goes clawing away like an evil spirit.”
“Talking about spirits,” put in the second mate, “he is a strict teetotaller; he won’t touch rum.”
“Tins of soupe-en-bouilli, I suppose,” said Claude, “would also defy him.”
“Not if he gets a tooth in one,” replied Warren; “and as for sardines—my conscience! sir, he is fond of them; if once he tastes them he’ll swallow the boxes at a single bite.”
“Boxes and all?” inquired Claude, laughing.
“Well, I never saw the empty boxes left about anywhere.”
“Must be a capital tonic, anyhow!” said Dr Barrett; “but a rather indigestible one.”
There had been wood enough brought on purpose to build huts on shore—simply rough planks. The house of amusement was a famous one. Built with stone as to its chimney, and with wood, filled in with dry moss, as to its walls. There was a capital fireplace, too, in it.
The general routine of the day was somewhat as follows—that is, when there was any kind of bright star, or moonlight, or aurora gleams; though these last were very intermittent, and, like some of our electric lights, would go out without a moment’s warning. There was breakfast at eight; muster to prayers afterwards, on the upper deck, which was almost entirely covered over.
Prayers are seldom more impressive than when repeated away out in the middle of the boundless ocean, but there is even more solemnity in them when heard amid the eternal silence of Greenland wilds. I don’t think there was one poor soul on board the Icebear who would have missed those morning prayers for anything.
Jack-the-Sailor is a rough stick, I must confess, and, as a rule, a very jolly stick. Yet, nevertheless, he has his solemn moments, as well as you, reader, who, maybe, never were afloat on blue water, have.
“I feels some sentences o’ them prayers, that the captain reads, go kind o’ round my heart,” said Chips one day down in the half-deck mess. “That bit, for instance, ‘O God, at whose command the wind blows, and lifts up the waves of the sea and stills the raging thereof.’”
“You hain’t got the words what you might say altogether correct,” said Bos’n Bowman; “but, howsomedever, you’ve got the main thing, and that’s the sense.”
“Well, Pipes,” replied Chips, “you’re more of a scollard than me.”
“And,” put in Spectioneer Wray, “there’s that bit, you know, ‘When we gave up all for lost, our ship, our goods, our lives, Thou didst mercifully look upon us, and wonderfully command a deliverance.’”
“I’ve often found the truth of that,” said Pipes. “So ’as most on us,” said Chips, solemnly. “But,” continued Pipes, “there’s these words: ‘That we may return in safety to enjoy the blessings of the land.’ Don’t they bring old England up before your mind, with her green valleys and flowery fields, and all that kind of thing, eh, maties?”
“Ay, and there’s those as follows,” said Chips, who was a married man and hailed from Rotherhithe, “‘Enjoy the fruits of our labours,’ which means, o’ course, take the missus and the children to Margate for a whole month.”
After prayers, till “pipe for dinner,” there were the various duties of the ship to be carried on, and there was not an officer or man, from Claude himself to little saucy Boy Bounce, who emptied the cook’s ashes, helped to clean the coppers, and attended to the aviary and the wants of Fingal, who did not find something to do. Dinner and smoking done, if the weather permitted, a pleasure party for the shore would be told off.
The doctor and his merry men could do but little exploring now, and his mines lay some distance in the interior among the wild hills, and, from its colour, the ore could not easily be worked by lamplight.
Sometimes for whole weeks the darkness would be intense (Note 2), then the Icebear’s crew had to seek their pleasures indoors or on board the ship. That house on shore was an incalculable boon to these forlorn adventurers. It was devoted, not to games—these could be played on board—but to music, dancing, acting, and to lectures. The musicians were several, and therefore a by no means bad ship’s band was formed. Those, therefore, who could not play could listen; moreover, many of those who could not play, could spin a yarn, dance, or sing.
The lectures were given by good Dr Barrett, whose gentleness and thoughtfulness of the men had rendered him a very great favourite.
These lectures of his, although often on such abstract subjects as chemistry, botany, geology, or astronomy, were always simple and always interesting, and often amusing.
But there were games on the snow-covered ice—frolics we might call them—invented by the men themselves, but none the less exhilarating on that account. The sea about them might be as deep as the hills around were high, but no fear could be entertained of any one falling through—a band of elephants might have frolicked and floundered on it without the least danger.
The snow in some places had been swept off the ice by the wind, leaving it but a few inches deep. These were just the spots for a right roaring game of genuine football. But there was another game, invented by Paddy O’Connell, who was the life and soul of his mess, if not of the whole ship. It was carried on among deep snow, and was very amusing and exciting.
Paddy called it “football.” Well, it was “Irish football,” for the only man in the ship who could kick the thing a yard was gigantic Byarnie. “It was as large as the biggest pumpkin ever you saw, and quite as big as the largest,” so said Paddy. You had to throw it to begin with, and when you got it you had to run with it, and you did not run many yards before you fell with half a dozen on top of you. But the cream of the game lay in the fact that, however much light there might be, before you had played many minutes you could not tell who was your opponent and who not, everybody being as white as the dustiest of millers. When you were struggling for the ball, it was just as likely as not that you were trying to trip up a friend Besides, often when you got it, and could have a fair shy, then, as you could not see well, what with the uncertain light, and what with the powdery snow, you perhaps threw it the wrong way. It was a rare game, and oh! did it not make you hungry!
No wonder that on returning on board you could eat a hot supper with all the appetite of a Highland drover.
“Paddy,” said Dr Barrett once, as he patted him on the back, “you’re a genius!”
“Thrue for you, sorr,” says Paddy, “and it’s just that same me mother towld me. ‘Paddy,’ says she, ‘you’re a born ganious, and there ain’t the likes o’ ye ’twixt Killarney and Cork.’”
Note 1. The shoulder of the seal is the bear’s favourite tit-bit, and I have seldom seen him eat more of Miss Phoca, when sport was good and provisions (seal) plentiful—G.S.
Note 2. There are winters and winters in Greenland. Sometimes for two or even three months together the darkness is deep and depressing, the whole country shrouded in a night that seems never-ending.